Too many mounted disks

A simple dd test (SSD vs HD)

This is a simple and not scientific benchmark, using the dd UNIX command, that will give you an idea of how faster an SSD than a usual hard disk is.

1TB SATA hard disk

$ dd if=/dev/zero of=bigfile1 bs=10000000 count=512

512+0 records in

512+0 records out

5120000000 bytes transferred in 59.423885 secs (86160640 bytes/sec)

256Gb SATA SSD

$ dd if=/dev/zero of=bigfile1 bs=10000000 count=512

512+0 records in

512+0 records out

5120000000 bytes transferred in 22.594125 secs (226607583 bytes/sec)

The results are impressive!

Unibrain Hard Disk enclosure

This is my enclosure of choice (from Unibrain) and I will put my 1TB hard disk in it.

Crucial 256GB m4 SSD

As I am going to replace my iMac's hard disk with a SSD, I ordered a Crucial m4 256GB SSD.
It should be here by the end of this week!

smartReporter 3

SMARTReporter!

I will keep you informed!

Machine: iMac 27''

Disk Utility shows the problem too...

Copying to a USB stick

I am currently trying to copy 2 ISO files (2.23Gb and 3.27Gb respectively). It won't take Mac OS X 10.5 2 hours to copy them (although the first estimation was, indeed, 2 hours!!!) but I think it takes Mac OS X 10.5 too long (I think it will take about 20 minutes to copy them).

The USB stick is 8Gb in size and I connected it to the USB port of a 23'' Apple Cinema Display.

Do you happen to know the reason it takes that much?

Drobo can fail too!!

If you think that Drobo cannot fail, think again! Read Terry's story.

I do not have Drobo but I will definitely love to have one.

WD introduces 2 terabyte hard drive

WD link.

Format a U3 USB stick

A couple of months ago, I wanted to buy a USB stick. I would like to have a Sandisk one but I did not like the U3 functionality they offered.

Back then, I did not know that I could remove it so I bought a USB stick from a different brand. Nevertheless, I found that you can remove the U3 functionality from a U3 USB stick using the following instructions:

• U3 instructions
• macosxhints instructions

Lacie rugged hard disks

After selling my PowerMac G5 and getting a Macbook Pro, I decided that I should also get USB and Firewire powered hard disks (for lowering the noise as well as having more portability).

I now have two Lacie Rugged portable hard disks. A USB-only (250Gb) and a USB/Firewire 400/800 one (320 Gb).

I also have a FireDisk 800-s Unibrain external hard disk (300Gb) that is not bus-powered.